Comey also says cops may not police well out of fear of being in a viral video.

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FBI Director James Comey is upping the ante on the government's war on encryption. During a news conference Wednesday, Comey not only said he expected more litigation over the issue, but he claimed that encryption was an "essential tradecraft" of terror groups like ISIS.

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The director's comments come as the nation finds itself in a crossroads over the encryption debate. Two high-ranking senators have proposed legislation that mandates the tech sector build backdoors into their products—harkening back to the days of the clipper chip proposal during the President Bill Clinton administration. All the while, the government is content on jailing people indefinitely who won't unlock their phones for the authorities.

When the director talked about more litigation, he was referencing the FBI-Apple fight in which the agency obtained a court order demanding that Apple write code to assist the authorities in unlocking the encrypted phone of one of the San Bernardino, California shooters. The government eventually dropped the plan because it said it cracked the phone with the help of an outside party.

Comey took issue with other technology, too. He claimed the YouTube society was thwarting police officers in the field and might be the reason for an increase in violent crime in 40 cities. According to the New York Times, which attended Comey's news conference:

James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect”—with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video—“could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities.
“There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime—the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he told reporters.

The director said that "lots and lots of police officers" may not be policing as hard out of fear of being the next officer in a viral online video. And that "could well be an important factor" in explaining an uptick in violent crime, he said.

The lesson here, it seems, is that it's OK for the authorities to surveil the populace. But it's not OK when the citizenry surveils the authorities because it chills their activities.

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David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets